Silencing! Censorship! Until we do it...

There is no one single level of hypocrisy. There are the tiny hypocrisies that happen throughout life; maybe someone is a vegetarian who opposes the way animals are treated but succumbs to the occasional temptation and devours a burger. You may be opposed to the destruction of the planet by global warming but need to go and see relatives in Australia with only two weeks holiday available.

Then there are the big hypocrisies, hypocrisies of moral and ethical stances. For example a politician who preaches sexual morality and then engages in a bizarre ritual involving a dead farm animal.  The biggest hypocrisies, however, are when one group weaponizes a rhetorical instrument for bashing opponents, and then goes and indulges in the same thing themselves that they criticise. 

I guess most readers of this blog will have guessed the people I am talking about by now; yes, there are normal hypocrites, there are massive hypocrites and there are TERFs. 

“SILENCING!”

“CENSORSHIP!!” 

The cries of fabricated outrage from the TERFs and their apologists in mainstream media ring out. This happens every time anyone supporting trans people’s right to live their lives unabused, unharrassed and unmolested decides they don’t want to listen to the increasingly fanatical drivellings of this abusive, malicious and mendacious group.

When a students’ union rightly says it does not want its facilities used as a platform for hate, incitement to hate, abuse and fabricated evidence, the defenders of the right to free speech immediately take to national media to broadcast to millions how they are being silenced and censored. In a thoroughly unprincipled attempt to appear to be taking the moral high ground they tell the world, effortlessly using mainstream media, how they are prevented by teh tranz from saying what they want. Somehow their noxious cocktail of abuse, harassment and untruths represents a "valid point of view" leading to a "reasoned debate" about another group of people's right to live their lives.

So when I heard that that the TERFs have decided they want to silence a trans person and prevent her from speaking at a feminist event, my first reaction was... Well, I would like to say that I didn’t believe it; people who weaponise accusations of censorship and silencing, when it is really just no-platforming, would never attempt to censor or silence a trans person surely?

The problem is that it was all too believeable and it is true. The amazing Jane Fae has been banned, by some TERFs, from speaking at a Feminism In London event because she has written about pornography. The TERFs have finally manifested their ridiculousness in a way which cannot be regarded as anything other than profound, grating hypocrisy.

And, like I said, this isn’t the “petits hypocraties” of everyday life; this is a big, moral and unprincipled hypocrisy which tells us a great deal about the TERFs as a group. 

"Free speech" is obviously only an accusation to be thrown around when it benefits them, not a principle about which they can claim the high moral ground. Indeed this is the moral equivalent of the Mindanao Trench. TERF discourse flings inaccurate, nebulous and woolly accusations of censorship and silencing at trans people like a muck spreader in the fields, whilst engaging in the very things they have, falsely, accused trans people of. You couldn't make this stuff up.

This tells us a great deal about the nature of TERF discourse; it is not a "discourse" at all in the accepted sense, indeed it probably doesn't even qualify to be called a "narrative", since at least most narratives attempt a semblance of coherence. The utterances of the TERFs can only really be described as Empty Weaponized Rhetoric. Pronouncements of no value, merely representing linguistic oppression, abuse and inhumanity. Sad that Feminism in London has allowed itself to be influenced by these fanatics, a conference which has now allowed itself to become devalued and diminished.

Dishonest (TERF?) article in Wall Street Journal deconstructed.

My opinion of Debra W. Soh's article in WSJ

There are now so many misleading and deliberately dishonest articles online about trans people in general and trans children in particular that it is difficult to do take-downs of them all, not to say mind-numbingly boring, since they usually employ the same tired rhetoric. This one is typical, by someone who can only be presumed to be a transphobe with an axe to grind. The original is in italics, my comments are in standard text. The original article is in the Wall Street Journal.


"From “Why Transgender Kids Should Wait to Transition,” by Debra W. Soh, a sex researcher and neuroscientist at York University in Toronto, in Pacific Standard magazine online, Sept. 1::

Popular opinion suggests that early intervention is the necessary approach in order to remedy a child’s gender dysphoria

No it doesn't. There is no such thing as "popular opinion" as far as trans children is concerned, there are the opinions of people who know about trans kids, people who used to be trans kids and are now overwhelmingly trans adults, and parents of trans kids.

This consists of early social transitioning 

No it doesn't. It consists of allowing the child to express the gender identity they wish to express and at all times taking their lead. The way this has been written is deliberately misleading in my opinion, in that it implies an element of coercion that is simply not there. Any coercion of trans children is always intense social pressure to conform to their birth assigned gender not to transition.

followed by hormone blockers,

Not necessarily no, however blockers are given when the child is ready in some cases.

 to prevent the otherwise irreversible changes of puberty, 

What Debra W Soh fails to mention here is that the effects of these hormone blockers are entirely reversible at any time. The omission of this information is particularly crucial at this point, unless the reader knows this they will, once again, interpret what is written here very differently from the way it should be. But that sounds like Soh's intention.

contra-sex hormones, 

Again Soh fails to mention is the age at which hormones are prescribed, this article is misleading without that information,

and, if desired, eventual 

That is once they are 18 and legally entitled to decide for themselves what they do with their body.

sex re-assignment surgery. 

Usually referred to by professionals as "genital reconstruction surgery" This section is written to make it sound like a conveyor belt with an inevitable ending which, once children are on it, are unable to get off. This is a rhetorical device which suggests something different from what the actual situation is, without actually having to say it in so many words, which in this case would be lying. In fact it is hard for trans children, at all stages of their development to continue to get treatment that is appropriate for them, and they are always offered the opportunity to discontinue treatment if they so wish.

Denying a child these interventions is viewed as antiquated and cruel.

Which is because it is antiquated and cruel. I should know I was denied them when I was a child and it almost cost me my life, and I know plenty of young trans people and trans children who have had to fight to get the healthcare they need, against such views as hers. This sentence is particularly disingenuous, dishonest and misleading. While the writer opposes this kind of intervention she does not inform the reader what the alternative is. That is because the only alternative is coercion (sometimes referred to as "talking therapies") with the aim of forcing conformity to the gender assigned at birth, refusal of treatment at puberty and forced adherence to externally imposed and inappropriate gender norms. This kind of treatment has a name, its name is "reparative therapy". Reparative therapy is what killed Leelah Alcorn and many other trans kids. Although she does not say it, in effect Soh is tacitly advocating endangering the lives of trans children, only she doesn't have the guts to say so, for obvious reasons.

But research has shown

Highly contested and disputed research

that most gender dysphoric children outgrow their dysphoria, 

or appear to do so, but as I say, the research upon which this assertion is based is contested and, in some cases considered by many to be biased.

and do so by adolescence: 

which is when hormone blockers are prescribed. So in other words no physiological intervention is given until adolescence, which is when, Soh claims, most "grow out of it". As such I fail to see what her problem is here. 

Most 

Once again this is contested.

will 

Given that the research she basis this on is contested, using the modality of "will" is inappropriate to say the least.

grow up to be happy, gay adults, and some, like myself, to be happy, straight adults. 

And many will grow up to be suicidal and depressed trans people because they have not been given the right treatment as children.

There is a small proportion of trans kids 

Again these figures are highly contested. Not only does Soh repeat, Goebbels-style, these contested assertions, but she fails to mention that these assertions are contested. This is profoundly dishonest.

whose dysphoria will persist 

"Persist" is a particularly nasty choice of vocabulary. clearly selected to pathologise and give the worst possible connotative implications. Vicious stuff.

and who would benefit from medical intervention, but the tricky part remains predicting whom these ideal candidates will be. . . .

No. You have said yourself that these children normally stop being trans by adolescence, well adolescence is when treatment begins. 

Waiting until a child has reached cognitive maturity 

And who decides when that will be? Hmmmm, let's have a guess...

before making these sorts of decisions would make the most sense. 

No, this is quite possibly the worst possible solution. The reason hormone blockers are prescribed is to give children the time and breathing space to come to a decision when they are "cognitively mature". Withholding blockers can only be regarded as forcing physiological changes on them which will be distressing at best.

But this is an unpopular stance, and scientists and clinicians who support it are vilified, 

No they are criticised and their views deconstructed and their motives for making these claims questioned. If that seems like "vilification" then that is probably because your ideas and your motives have the potential to harm children. 

not because science—which should be our guiding beacon—disproves it, but because it has been deemed insensitive and at odds with the current ideology. 

No, this is entirely wrong and a straw man argument. This is what you would like the reason for opposition to your ideas and motives to be, because it suits your argument to present it as such but it is not. It is not "insensitive" it is potentially harmful. It is not "at odds with current ideology" it is at odds with current, scientifically and medically guided practice, not to mention the latest research. To be honest Soh's use of the term "ideology" here is very revealing, because it is an element of the empty weaponised rhetoric used by a group of transphobes called TERFs. Using this particular rhetorical attack strongly suggests that Soh is a TERF.

I often wonder, as I review the myriad of editorials 

Editorials written by and large by transphobes.

and magazine articles published every day 

ie. material that is not research-based or academic

on transgender kids, if I had been born 20 years later, would adults in my life be suggesting transitioning as a solution for me? 

No, that would never happen and demonstrates one of two things; either that you are so out of touch with issues regarding trans children that you have no right to be writing this, or that you have a hidden agenda and are using more empty weaponised rhetoric for oppressive purposes. The one thing trans kids have in common is how hard they have to struggle to get anyone, parents, doctors, teachers, etc to take them seriously. Suggesting that somehow someone else would impose some kind of gender transition on you is either fanciful, profoundly misinformed or deliberately dishonest.

Even more alarmingly, with all of the information floating around the Internet and on mainstream TV, would I myself believe that I had an issue that would not eventually subside on its own?"

Oh dear, this final salvo is a typical TERF line of attack; "deny trans kids access to the internet" is a form of reparative therapy in its own right as well as a denial of the basic human rights of trans kids to understand their own situations. Once again this suggests you are a TERF.

This article strongly suggests one of three things; that either Soh is ignorant of just about everything that is being written about trans kids by people who are not TERFs that she is quite clearly not qualified to write such a piece using (or abusing) her professional status to give it more validity than it deserves, or that she is a transphobe, probably a TERF, or both.  The problem is that people like Soh are writing this kind of material and aiming it at people who are largely ignorant of trans issues. If you have any background knowledge this piece is quite obviously rubbish, for those who do not it sounds credible. This is the danger of publishing this kind of output.

Perceptions matter and perceptions kill.

I am writing this through tears of sadness, tears of rage and tears of hatred. Today I saw one of the worst images you can ever expect to see. I'm not going to repost it here because this is an image that no-one should ever have to see, but this link (TW) takes you to the Guardian article where you can see it. It is an image of a drowned Syrian refugee child washed up on a beach in the Mediterranean, no doubt close to places where many of us go on holiday.

Sadness: He looked just like my lovely nephew and was probably about the same age. He looked just like so many of the children I have taught during my career as a primary school teacher, he looked like the street urchins who play on the pavement and in the parks near where I live. Heartbreaking, and doubtless there are many dozens, if not hundreds more like him.

Rage: This is a needless tragedy, he didn't have to die but for the incompetent politics of Western involvement in the Middle-East and the pervasive mean-spirited racism of Ukip and the like. No parent is going to put their child on a flimsy boat to cross the sea unless it is safer there than on the land they are on. No-one is going to take such risks without very, very, very good reasons. It is time we lived up to our responsibilities as a nation and took more refugees from Syria, it is time we put a stop to this murderous trade in human lives which sees people smugglers getting rich of the desperation and deaths of people just like us.

Vile

Hatred: For the PR actor without a soul who calls himself "Prime Minister" who has just said that taking more refugees will not solve the refugee crisis. This is like saying that food will not prevent a famine; of course it won't but it will enable those currently starving to survive until the danger is passed. If Britain had offered refuge to the family of that child on the beach his short, tragic life would not have ended the way it did. Cameron has just revealed his true self; he is nothing more than a mouthpiece for the wealthy, uncaring, selfish neoliberal elite. "Protect the bankers, who gives a toss about children?" For him these "swarms" represent nothing more than a disease, insects not human beings.

Hatred also: For the BBC who have persisted in describing these people as "migrants" when they are

refugees. Again their mealy-mouthed, petty legalistic arguments trying to justify the use of Ukip-speak fail to grasp the vastly different connotations of the two words. To argue, as they have done, that the term "migrants" is a kind of Umbrella-term and includes refugees, is the worst kind of dissimulation. As it carries on doing so, people die. People die because the majority of the population still thinks they are coming to take their jobs and "welfare" rather than fleeing for their lives. Perceptions matter, and perceptions kill.

I am truly ashamed of my country today, the way we have allowed ourselves to become afflicted by the ideology of Ukip, thanks to the BBC. It has turned us into a nasty, xenophobic, mean-spirited, selfish, narrow-minded, bigoted, insular, prejudiced, contemptible people, probably regarded by the rest of the world with disgust. A disgust I share.

We are killing children

There are many photos of dead children floating in the sea or washed up on beaches going round on social media, so I'm not going to include any here. But it has to be said that we in Europe, and especially the UK have the ability to prevent such deaths. These children are refugees from war and violence in places like Syria, they are coming here because there is no alternative for them. They are not coming to sponge off social security or take our jobs, they are coming because they have no choice.

The fact that the BBC is still describing such people as "migrants" is a disgrace and demonstrates just how badly the BBC has been taken over by the racist Ukip narrative. I recommend that everyone stops paying their TV licence and stops watching TV, in protest. I have learned so much more since I started doing that.

As a nation and a continent we have responsibilities to the people fleeing violence, and our first responsibility is to stop them from dying, our second to use the correct term for them and the third to take care of them until they can go back home. Anything less is murder.

A "Psychotherapist" writes...

This is a guest post from a retiring clinical “Teen” psychotherapist, Lyin Anderson who has spent the last 35 years treating trans kids according to her wonderful intuition under the guidance of 2nd wave feminist “mandating” theory, her story is similar to that of Lane Anderson, another retiring fictional psycho therapist featured in this blog.

“It is with regret that I pack up for my last day at work. I have decided that I can no longer work in this oppressive atmosphere after doing this work since the 1980s. So I have decided to retire on a full pension to my yacht and luxury condominium in the Florida Keys. 

Why has working as a psychotherapist suddenly become so oppressive? Well, ever since I started work in the 1980s and a young trans person was brought in front of me, I have been able to do what I liked. What I liked was Radical Feminist Reparative Therapy (RFRT). Essentiallly this means telling the parents to take her away, remove all her dresses and barbie dolls and force her to do macho, masculine things like football, baseball and fishing. Unless the trans child was a boy, of course, in which case they had to put him in frilly dresses and force him to wear make-up, play with dolls and fret about his appearance all day.

Of course I never called it RFRT, it was always dressed up in phrases like “questioning gender roles”, “managing life’s gray areas”, “intersecting interests”, “resuming contact with our critical thinking skills and reducing our growing sense of self doubt”, “fatal for a civilization”, “looking for ways to belong, ways to understand who they are in place and in time.” Those of us who have used RFRT get used to talking in vague euphemisms, ultimately they are all about Reparative Therapy.

What if the kids didn’t like that, what if they self-harmed or committed suicide as a result? Tough titties, these kids shouldn’t have been trans anyway, serves them right, because being trans harms women and feminists. We know this because Janice Raymond said so. She told us that transgenderism should be morally mandated out of existence, well I have done my fair share of mandating trans kids out of existence; RFRT works really well, either they become miserable cis kids or they die, pour encourager les autres. Job done. With people like me around no wonder there were so few trans kids in the 80s and 90s. 

Back in those days life was sweet and I truly felt I was doing my bit to defend the world from the scourge of transgenderism. So what happens now? Those fucking trannies start getting together and demanding to be treated fairly. They tell us what they want, they get protocols changed so that I can’t use RFRT any more, well yes I know RFRT isn’t based on any accepted psychological theory but it is effective in getting rid of trannies. Janice Raymond would be proud. I am told she helped the Republicans get rid of poor, black and hispanic trans people when she helped them withdraw trans healthcare, forcing them into dangerous situations where they get murdered. Well I mopped up the rest. Trouble is the psychology establishment is now saying we must listen to these trannies and that driving them to suicide and self-harm is no longer an acceptable treatment for transgenderism.

Have you ever heard anything so ridiculous? 

Next they will be saying these trannies deserve human rights, why soon they will be doing normal jobs, living normal healthy lives having normal healthy relationships and normal healthy kids in our communities and well then where would we be… I ask you?

Anyway, the situation has now become so oppressive at work, now that they are not letting me use RFRT any more, I’m going to have to retire. But days in the sunshine on my yacht will be scant reward for being unable to continue ridding the world of trannies. This really is a denial of human rights, my right to treat these kids as I wish is most important, and I will no longer tolerate being told by my boss to follow professional, clinical, academically evidenced guidelines.This is totally unreasonable and I will not stand for it. My intuition is much more valid than those.

At our final staff meeting last week I could finally speak up against this repressive regime, and I used all the euphemistic phrases for Reparative Therapy, the wide-eyed silence round the room was palpable. Somebody must have made a joke about these trannies because as soon as I left the room they all burst out laughing. Pity they all got the time of my leaving do wrong, but eating all that food on my own is something I enjoyed terribly."

Nb; Hans Christian Anderson (no relation) was a fiction writer

Letter to editors of Rutters

Dear Editors,

We the undersigned transgender and non-transgender academics wish to raise the issue of your inclusion in the new edition of Rutter's Child and Adolescent Psychology of a section written by Kenneth Zucker regarding "treatment" of transgender children.

Kenneth Zucker's approach to transgender children is one we believe to be fundamentally flawed and extremely dangerous and that his approach amounts to a version of "conversion therapy" which has for many years been discredited as a "treatment" for homosexuality. One of the most recent studies (De Vries et al 2013) demonstrates that the most beneficial outcome for trans children and adolescents comes from allowing trans children to transition as they wish and to express their gender identities rather than suppressing them.

We would also like to draw your attention to the case of 17-year-old transgender girl Leelah Alcorn who committed suicide in December last year after being subjected to conversion therapy. Leelah, left behind a suicide note on Tumblr, which has been reproduced here; http://lazerprincess.soup.io Please read it, it is very well known amongst the transgender community and beyond. Survivors of conversion therapy overwhelmingly report that it has left them feeling traumatised and suicidal but has not altered their gender identity or sexual orientation. The possibility of suing those who carried out this "treatment" for malpractice is still being explored.

We understand why you may have selected Kenneth Zucker to contribute to this text book but we suggest that you first read Ansara and Hegarty (2012) whose research exposes what they characterise as an "invisible college" of psychologists who cite and peer review each other's work regarding transgender issues, and in particular transgender children.

In addition not only may the inclusion of this section breach the APA's nondiscrimination policy, but it also runs counter to the World Professional Association for Transgender Health's (WPATH 2012) explicit guidelines on treatment of transgender children and young people. Our opinion is that maintaining the inclusion of this section without reference to current accepted practice may significantly harm the reputation of this publication

We feel sure that, once you have found out a bit more about the misuse of conversion therapy you will agree that inclusion of this element was a mistake and would wish to distance yourselves from it and we suggest that you do so publicly,and request that the publisher withdraws and reprints this version.

We respectfully suggest that you consider having Zucker's section taken out of your publication because we believe that his approach is profoundly harmful to transgender children and young people and has the potential to cause death by suicide as in the case of Leelah Alcorn and others. Including this section in your publication legitimises such approaches.

Finally it should be noted that Kenneth Zucker is no longer able to practice these "therapies" since the province of Ontario banned them. An increasing number of jurisdictions have banned conversion therapy or are withdrawing public funding for it;

 http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/09/us/politics/obama-to-call-for-end-to-conversion-therapies-for-gay-and-transgender-youth.html?_r=0
.



References


Ansara, G and Hegarty, P (2012) Cisgenderism in psychology: pathologising and misgendering children from 1999 to 2008 Psychology & SexualityVolume 3, Issue 2, 2012, pages 137- 160

De Vries et al (2013) Young Adult Psychological Outcome After Puberty Suppression and Gender Reassignment Pediatrics .2013-2958

WPATH (2012) Standards of care for the health of transsexual, transgender, and gender non-conforming people WPATH
http://www.wpath.org/uploaded_files/140/files/Standards%20of%20Care,%20V7%20Full%20Book.pdf



Signatories,

Natacha Kennedy (Goldsmiths College and University College, University of London)



I will organise these into alphabetical order once people have signed

UPDATED VERSION: The TERFs sink even lower...

OK, so this is the updated, revised and unabridged version of this blog post. It is being updated in response to feedback from some trans people who didn’t know what TERFs are. I have put my definition below but before getting to that I would like to comment on this. The fact that quite a few trans people don’t know about TERFs is, I believe, a positive sign. TERFs used to be everywhere and harassing and abusing any out trans person, especially on social media. Their aim of silencing trans people was working; trans people were threatened with abuse, doxxing and even violence. Now things are different; it is perfectly possible to be trans and not ever encounter a TERF, nope, not even a little one.

There are, I believe, a number of reasons for this. Firstly, TERFism is clearly failing. It always was a failed ideology but now it is failing to do what it set out to do which was, in Janice Rayomnd’s words to ensure that what she calls “transsexualism” (a delberately chosen term, designed to dehumanise - the corect term is “trans people”) is “morally mandated out of existence”. When Raymond wrote this incitement to bullying and hate crime in 1979, there were few out trans people. That is why she could get away with an incitement to hate crime and why TERFs could bully those few trans people who were around. 

Secondly there are more of us now. As a result of their failed action and hate-crimes against trans people, lots and lots and lots of people have come out as trans. There must be at least a thousand more out trans people in the world than there were in 1979. So it is harder for the dwindling number of TERFs to harass and hassle every trans person. This is a good thing. 

Thirdly, this bullying took the shape of using their greater socioeconomic positions to control the media narrative about trans people. Mainstream media discourse about trans people was, prior to 2008, pretty much controlled by the TERF point of view, with a complimentary contribution from their friends the right-wing psychologists. Trans people were pathologised, othered and positioned as “the problem”. We rarely got a look in. Now, newspapers like the Guardian regularly publish sympatheic articles about trans people.

So the TERF project, always nothing more than an abusing and hate-fliied mode of action, has descended into a ghastly and ghostly farce, a pale shadow of a pale shadow with senior TERFs running around in what can only be described as a flap, desperately digging up examples of supposed victimisation or silencing of their increasingly ridiculous narrative. Obviously we must not be complacent; TERFism is primarliy a mode of action, as I have established before, rather than a discourse or ideology; their aim is to harm trans people and will attempt to do so by covert means, we saw earlier in the year how TERF discourse has infected the Green Party, and there has been evidence in the past that it has infected the Labour Party also, this is why it is important that we maintain a strong trans presence in political parties. TERFism may appear dead but somewhere in a cesspit far removed from reality, it still rumbles like a grotesque creature from the underworld.

Anyway the first definition of TERF on Google, (thanks to Sahra Rae Taylor) is;

“Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminist, that group of feminists that claims that trans women aren’t really women, as biological determinism is only a fallacy when used against them, not when they use it against others.”

Anyway, on to the original blog post, hope it makes more sense now to everyone;

"TERFs sink even lower" type of headline has become a regular response to whatever the TERFs have been up to in their action to harm trans people.

TERFs like to call themselves "gender critical" feminists, trying to promote the idea that they are interested in a kind of academic, open debate about trans people, and weaponising any attempt by trans people to oppose what they do, by pretending it is 'silencing'.

Well they have sunk to a new low by using one of their anonymous, coward, Twitter feeds to abuse and harass a disabled trans woman. Once again this exposes their true nature. They are not interested in any kind of open discussion or debate, that is just a cover.

It is a cover for action which includes harassment, abuse, stalking - including doxxing minors - and spreading deliberate misinformation about trans people. As I have said before, TERFism is a mode of action, it is nothing to do with being 'gender critical' it is everything to do with an obsessive, fanatical hatred of trans people and represents a determination to take action unto and including violence against trans people, including campaigning to have trans people's healthcare withdrawn and replaced with "talking therapies" which we know from the experience of people like Leelah Alcorn merely results in depressed and suicidal victims. 

In short the TERFs are engaged in an assault on trans people and, and many of them have argued, they would like to see us dead, their only suggestion to deal with the 'problem' of trans people - "talking therapies", or morally mandating us out of existence - is in effect an extermination strategy. This kind of abuse and harassment is indicative of this.